Pynson’s will is dated 18th November 1529, and was proved on 18th February 1530. He was succeeded in business by Robert Redman, who had been for a few years previously his rather unscrupulous rival.
The last few years of the fifteenth century saw a great change in the development of English printing. Up to the time of Caxton’s death in 1491, there seems to have been little foreign competition, but immediately after this date the state of things altered entirely. Both France and Italy produced books for the English market, and sent over stationers to dispose of them: Gerard Leeu at Antwerp printed a number of English books, mostly of a popular character, while Hertzog in Venice; and a number of printers in Paris, printed service-books of Sarum use.
By 1493 two stationers were settled in England; one, Frederick Egmondt, as an agent for Hertzog, the other, Nicholas Lecompte, who sold books printed in Paris. Though we only know of these two as stationers through their names appearing in the colophons of books with which they were connected, there must have been many others of whom we have no trace. After the Act of 1483, which so strongly encouraged foreign importations, a very large number of books for the English market were printed abroad. This was at first occasioned by the small variety in the number of types and the scarcity of ornamental letters and woodcuts. In 1487, Caxton commissioned George Maynyal, a Paris printer, to print an edition of the Sarum Missal, and this is the first foreign printed book for sale in England whose history we know. About ten years previously, a Sarum Breviary had been printed at Cologne, and in 1483 another edition at Venice. The first edition of the Sarum Missal was printed about 1486 by Wenssler at Basle. In the fifteenth century, at least fifty books are known to have been printed abroad for sale in England. Most of these were service-books, but there were a few of other classes. Gerard Leeu reprinted three of Caxton’s books, The Chronicles, The History of Jason, and the History of Paris and the fair Vienne, and added a fourth popular book to these, which had not previously appeared in English, the Dialogues of Salomon and Marcolphus. In addition to these, he printed editions of the Sarum Directorium Sacerdotum and Horæ.
Another class of books produced abroad were school-books, and the earliest of these for English use is an edition of the grammatical tracts of Perottus, printed at Louvain in 1486 by Egidius van der Heerstraten. In the same year Leeu printed the Vulgaria, and very shortly afterwards editions of the Grammars by Anwykyll and the Garlandia were issued from Deventer, Antwerp, Cologne, and Paris.
The greater portion, however, of this foreign importation consisted of service-books, at least forty editions being sent over from abroad before 1501. From Venice were sent Breviaries and Missals, printed for the most part by Johannes de Landoia dictus Hertog. As we have said, the first edition of the Sarum Breviary was printed at Cologne by an unknown printer, and the first edition of the Sarum Missal at Basle by Wenssler about 1486. From Paris and Rouen came the greater number of Horæ, and such books as the Legenda, Manuale, and Liber Festivalis.
It is impossible to enter here with any fulness into the history of the earliest stationers and the books printed abroad for sale in England. It is rather foreign to our present subject, but would well repay careful study.